David Kwong admits he has two obsessions that many consider nerdy: magic and puzzles.
Kwong, who grew up in Brighton, has taken the obsessions to a whole new level. He has, in fact, integrated the two passions into profession, a job so successful that the 44-year-old Kwong has sold out major venues like the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and the Chicago Shakespeare Theater.
When onstage, Kwong, who graduated from Brighton High School, morphs into "The Enigmatist," combining what is sometimes alliteratively billed as "puzzles and prestidigitation." His journey to this point had pitstops that may seem askew from his ultimate profession, including a history degree from Harvard University and a stint in Hollywood.
"Here's the overlap," Kwong said in a telephone interview of the nexus of magic and words. "I am part of a very small group of (magic) practitioners that don’t pretend to have superpowers. I acknowledge that all magic tricks are puzzles for you to figure out."
So why not merge the two: word puzzles and traditional sleight-of-hand magic?
If you have a hard time envisioning the concept, search for Kwong's name and "crossword trick" with a YouTube video. Prepare to be stunned, as Kwong creates a crossword puzzle from scratch — something he does professionally for The New York Times, by the way — while incorporating a common "guess-the-card" magic stunt.
Kwong is bringing his "The Enigmatist" show to the Rochester Fringe Festival for shows Sept. 13 through Sept. 15 at the festival's Spiegeltent. Tickets are available at the festival's website and are $38 a person with special deals for larger groups.
This will be his first performance in Rochester, unless, of course, you count how he enthralled family and friends when a teenager with his performances. His high school friends, he said, often recall "that I was performing card tricks in the cafeteria and I was doing coin tricks in the back of French class."
An inspiration at the farm market
As a kid, Kwong became beguiled by magic at an unusual place — Bauman's Farm Markets. There, amid the weekend produce sales, one of the Bauman enchanted children with magic shows for children each weekend.
‘I saw him performing at the farm," Kwong said. "He was in front of the barn. He really inspired me. It became a childhood hobby."
That was Bob Bauman, now 80, who kept professionally doing magic until a decade ago. Kwong even remembers the trick that sent his brain spinning: Bauman had two small red sponge balls and placed one in Kwong's hand as Bauman held the other. Bauman closed his fist, the ball disappeared, then it reappeared in Kwong's hand with the other ball.
Bauman repeated the trick with Kwong's father, a retired professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center and, Kwong said, "the smartest man I know." His father, Tai Kwong, had no clue how the trick worked. That was enough to capture David Kwong's curiosity.
The story at Bauman's Farm Market will be part of Kwong's forthcoming childrens' book of tricks, appropriately titled "How to Fool Your Parents," later this year.
The book opens, stating that "no one makes more rules than your parents."
"Most of them are important, like 'Don’t skip school' or 'Don’t put your dog in the washing machine.' But some of them are annoying, like 'You can’t eat ice cream for dinner.' When I was a kid, I loved magic because it allowed me to be the one in charge of my parents’ attention, their actions, even their thoughts sometimes.
"When you perform magic, your parents have to play by your rules."
The word nerd
Kwong's mother, Joan Shelley Rubin, instilled the love of words and etymology, with the two battling through Scrabble games and enjoying crosswords. One of Kwong's heroes is Will Shortz, himself a puzzle creator and also crossword editor for the New York Times.
(A detached aside: One of Kwong's favorite words is "facetiously" because it contains each vowel and in order.)
Rubin, a history professor at the University of Rochester, took a 16-year-old Kwong to hear Shortz at a talk. Within a decade, Kwong was crafting his own crosswords. "He inspired me," Kwong said. "Will's become a close friend."
After Harvard, where he received the degree in history, Kwong went to work in the show business field, helping find projects for HBO and DreamWorks. He took on a job as the magic consultant in the 2013 film "Now You See Me," with Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson asbank-robbing magicians.
Kwong educated the cast in sleight-of-hand illusions. And the film also sparked what he calls a "light bulb moment."
"I realized I could take my other passions and hobbies of puzzles," he said, "and I could cross-pollinate them with a magic show and create a brand new type of cerebral nerdy brainy type of fun and magic."
Thus was born "The Enigmatist."
The show is heavy with audience participation, as they search for clues and answers with puzzles. The Chicago Sun Times wrote of the performance: "Kwong’s engaging, family-friendly show blends deep intelligence and an infectious love of language with some traditional magic tricks, such as card play, a climactic magic box and mentalism.
"The show is brainy — an ode to intellectual obsession — and yet completely accessible."
His parents, Kwong acknowledges, were concerned about his professional turn. Could one carve out a livelihood in magic?
"At the end of the day, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree," Kwong said. "It's an academic cerebral magic show."
And one that charmed his parents last year when they saw it at the Kennedy Center.
Yes, one can make a living as a magician, no matter how nerdy the show.
Gary Craig is a veteran reporter at the Democrat and Chronicle. His brother, Bob, was a teenage magician and Gary was sometimes his assistant. On occasion, Gary made slips that revealed the stunt behind the magic. It is now more than 50 years later and Gary wants to say "I'm sorry."
